How do I explain this

A not uncommon sight but still worth stopping to watch is the trucker explaining to the police officer how he plans to get out of this mess. He was too high to continue under the El so he turned onto Wakeling and blocked the hospital entrance. He had nowhere to go since Wakeling is one way at the end of that little stretch and he was too long to make a turn onto Griscom. I didn't stay to see how it was resolved.

Vinyl Siding

A few weeks ago I was browsing through Flickr which is the Yahoo service for sharing photographs. There are, of course, a lot of pictures there but I searched for Frankford and found a very good photographer who had posted quite a few of our neighborhood. He had one of my favorite buildings which is at the corner of Penn and Wakeling. It had fallen on what might be kindly called "hard times". Since the photographer had taken his picture the building had been undergoing renovation and this is a picture of it (twin on the right) as of last week.

Whenever you see old buildings being brought back to life you feel a glimmer of hope. What the owner does with it of course will determine whether it is a blight on the community or another milestone on our way upward. My gripe is the vinyl siding. But thanks for rebuilding the porch.

15th District PDAC Meeting

From the Northeast Times:

PDAC vice president Nancy Doerr announced that 200 youths have been brought to the 15th Police District curfew center at Frankford Group Ministry, 4620 Griscom St., since it opened on April 26.
Police bring curfew violators to the center, where they are evaluated by a social worker and parents are called to pick the offenders up.
Doerr also announced that the center, which has been open Thursdays through Sundays from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., won’t be open seven days a week in July as originally hoped.
According to Doerr, the center is operating with only seven active volunteers and they are not equipped. She called for PDAC members to step up and volunteer.

Read the entire article at: http://www.northeasttimes.com/2007/0628/pdac.html

Northwood Neighbors Association

From the Northeast Times

While the Northwood Civic Association officers and board members fought among themselves last week, the Northwood Neighbors Association discussed some substantive issues two days later.

Read the rest of the story from the Northeast Times here: http://www.northeasttimes.com/2007/0628/northwoodgroup.html

Wake Up Frankford and Juniata Park

This thread on Phillyblog has produced two interesting and thoughtful posts. One by JenRagen discussing the improvements made to public housing in Philadelphia. Another by Kukla65th discussing the importance of Frankford to the health of the Northeast. Interesting that both of these posters are from other areas of the city.

The prosperity of the Northeast is heavily tied to the future success of areas like Juniata and to a larger degree, Frankford. If Frankford begins to move upward, the NE can expect to see more success in farther out sections. I kind of think of Frankford as the downtown of the Northeast. Until this "downtown" prospers again, the rest of the NE will have to work harder to maintain attractive, stable residential character and institutions

Read them here: http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=9393

What is this building

I walk all over Frankford and find myself passing one interesting building after another. This one is a puzzlement. It looks almost like it has stood on the Old Kings Highway since the days of the stagecoach from Philadelphia. At present it is on the corner of Church and Frankford Avenue. There are some of what looks like similar construction on Adams avenue. Small stone houses are not all that common in this area and I wonder what story this one might tell us.

New links

I had a very nice email from Megan Forrestal president of the Frankford Business & Professional Association today. She gave me a link to the FBPA web site which I greatly appreciate. She also suggested that I post a link to SPIN. So both of these links are now active. check them out.